Start from journalism but go beyond it-Reflective essay for Emerging Journalism module
If we go back to three months ago, when we were still able to sit in the same room and had a drink in pubs after work, my homeland, China, was having a hard time because of Coronavirus at that time. Suddenly stories came out more than ever: A whole team of frontline nurses was tested positive. Restaurants sold stored goods on the street due to their closure. Residents in Wuhan volunteered to deliver food and medicine to patients who were in self-isolation. Asian students were punched in Germany because they wore face masks…
My colleague Anita said: “Any of these stories can be made into a movie and I’m sure they will be someday.”
She said this on the second session of Emerging Journalism module, an optional module in the last semester of my International Journalism course in Cardiff University. Then by the end of that day, her words became our first project idea for this module.
Cinematic News: A confusing trail run
The beginning was more confusing rather than difficult to me: We spent the first session playing ice-breaking games. We spent half of the second session doing personality quiz and being matched up into teams by the results of the quiz. We were asked to come up with an idea, but no rules or boundaries were given to us.
This is what made me confused, and what made me realized weeks later that how much we were being limited by asking for boundaries. Because ideas are not generated under rules or boundaries. They are results of spontaneous events and some thinking that is put into the events. Rules and boundaries will come in naturally afterwards, when we investigate, develop and form the idea.
My first impression of this term “emerging journalism” is to extend the approaches and angles while producing journalistic content with the help of modern technology, such as Artificial Intelligence or Virtual Reality. Therefore, journalism should still be the core of this term.
Inspired by Anita’s assumption, we decided to find out how film industry can help deliver news content in order to be more engaging and attractive. After some research we realized the current situation is, however, on the opposite: Movie industry is trying to make profit and to earn attention with the help of journalism.
Film Roma, which is heavily based on childhood of director Alfonso Cuarón, won 3 Oscars in 2019. Film 1917, a story happened in the First World War, has an amazing box office of $368 million worldwide. Chinese film The Captain achieved a ¥2 billion box office in China within the first 9 days. The true story behind happened a year before the film is a force landing made by Sichuan Airlines crew without human injury or death.
Real stories that once appeared on news articles are now helping the movie industry make huge profits. Because visual images have a greater impact on the audience. And the label “Based on true story” on a poster adds a sense of reality to the film- a production of art.
As a result, less and less people, especially young people, don’t read news. They would rather pay for a film based on real event, which could give them a better visual experience.
As journalism students, we wanted to turn the situation around. We decided to deliver news in movie format.
What came next from Dr David Dunkley Gyimah and James Taylor, lecturers of this module, is sacked model. And this was my first time knowing how to develop an idea into viable project.
With this guidance, Anita and I analyzed the system of film production, compared the difference between our product and documentary, which already existed in journalism as a good example of mixing movie skills and journalistic content. From then on, the lecture room turned into a lab. Brainstorming went on between groups. Mind map went onto the wall.
As we were busy moving this idea forward, Dr David Dunkley Gyimah pointed out a problem for us: We lacked of storytelling element, our strong suit as a journalist.
His words suddenly reminded me of the confusion I had at the first beginning: What is emerging journalism and how will it help me as a journalist?
Although we were learning the idea producing process which was usually included in the business field, we are still professionally trained journalists who should have better skills in storytelling and idea presenting than business person. Therefore, how to tell a story to grab people’s attention to your product is as important as other parts. It shouldn’t be abandoned in this module, it should be emphasised and spent time on.
This epiphany was not able to help me improve this project. Time rushes when you prepare but but it goesslow when you step onto the stage and present.
However, the mist in front of me at week 1 was faded when I looked back to the past few weeks after the first, awkward presentation. I guess this is the worth and beauty of a trail run.
Language speaking+3D technology: A proper restart
Standing on a clearer position, but this time all by myself, I was going to continue the cinematic news project, until my friend Alex told me on a Sunday tea break, that I pronounced “apple” in a funny way.
The tongue should be rolled at the end of this word, which I never did while saying this word and other similar ones like “people”.
To figure out if it’s only my problem or a general issue exists in language learning, I had a talk with Ms ITing Kao, lecturer in Chinese Studies, Modern Language School of Cardiff University, who is very experienced in Chinese and English language teaching.
Through the talked we found out several phonemes that are particularly difficult for foreigners, because they don’t have the same or similar phonemes in their mother language systems. If they can’t be aware of this, There will always be a difference between their pronunciation and the local, standard one. Some differences are so small that non-native speakers can hardly tell only by listening. But to native speakers, the difference is usually very obvious.
As a former German Studies student, my knowledge told me that this small difference in pronunciation were covered in phonetics, an academic subject which studies the physical properties of speech. In China, only professional universities with a strong language school will offer phonetics session to students. Others practise with English movies, songs and native speakers hired by private language training companies.
My friend Alex could identify my problem because he is a professional English teacher with several years of teaching experience in the UK and Vietnam. But not everyone is qualified to teach pronunciation like he is, although they are doing it.
So this is the birth story of my second project. I decided to use 3D modeling technology to visualize the physical movement of speech, so that people with no understanding of phonetics are also able to easily get access to the “secret” of a standard pronunciation.
With the previous lesson in mind, I separated my plan into two different directions: Analyse both academic theory and current language teaching system, storytelling by interviewing, rehearsing and collecting feedback.
Then with the help of Dr David Dunkley Gyimah, I was teamed up with my mentor Lee Robertson, the founder and CEO of an online community for UK financial services professionals called Octo Members. He showed me a third direction to make my project stable like a triangle.
With the vast experience in finance and business, Mr Lee Robertson suggested me to look at the cost, an element sometimes comes first to customers’ minds while making their decisions.
When I started doing the research, I realized it’s not only about looking at the prices labeled on different language teaching app. It depends exactly on who my target customers are. This research pushed me to re-identify my potential market, and to research with different approaches when it came to different target groups.
As a result, I collected course fees from different language institutions, which included online and offline formats. I researched how much a company need to spend on offering language training to employees. I am sure there are still many things I need to investigate in the future.
Review: Society is making progress, so is journalism
Finishing my 8-minute long final presentation which seemed impossible to me at week 1, I asked myself those questions again:
What is emerging journalism?
To me, it involves creative thinking, project developing and storytelling. If we put creativeness, business and journalism at three points of a triangle, emerging journalism stands inside this triangle. It taught me how to brainstorm an idea without boundaries, how to develop this idea systematically, and how to use storytelling skills to make this idea more attractive.
How will it help me as a journalist?
To be honest, it helps me in any position or any field. I would rather consider the purpose of this module as to offer me a different angle of seeing journalism: Newspaper and magazine are no longer the only formats of journalism. Instead, it exists in almost every industry. Charity has their own photo journalist, companies are collecting stories from the customers as branding strategy. Storytelling is everywhere, so journalism is everywhere.
Some people said modern life predicts the struggling circumstance journalism will face in the future as an industry. High speed internet, AI technology, news based films…every invention is weaken the uniqueness of journalism.
After this module, I think every progress we made is providing journalism with a new possibility.
